


My Way Amongst the Stars

by MayContainBlueberries



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, His Young Wrinkles, More Tags To Be Added as I figure out what the eff is going on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-19 13:56:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3612522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayContainBlueberries/pseuds/MayContainBlueberries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Murrys live in Lyra's world, and the Young Wizards crew in Will's and there are echtroi and spectres and angels and powers.</p><p>The title is taken from Sara William's poem "From the Old Astronomer (To His Pupil)".</p><p>This story takes place after the events of all the current Young Wizards books, and is NME compliant, although timelines are weird.  It takes place after the events of His Dark Materials.  It takes place after A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, and in the summer directly before Many Waters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Through The First Gate

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for cast of characters, some explanations of canon points, and whatever else I choose to shove in there.

There’s a window in the garden, behind Sandy and Dennys’s vegetable plot, where it starts to get a little less organized, where nature is a little more at ease. It’s a tiny window, one you only notice if you crouch down a certain way, and look from just the right angle. And it’s only big enough for someone small to squeeze through. No-one else, not Meg, not mother, not Sandy or Dennys, probably not even Fort, could fit through. But Charles Wallace could.

So when he was young, and everything got too much with Mother worrying and Meg having a hard time in school and the twins never really understanding, he and Essi would go out into the garden and through the window and just sit in the silence of another world so much like his own.

The place through the window looked more or less like Charles’s Wallace’s New England, down to the farmhouse. But this one was a little less well kept, and it was pretty clear no-one lived there. Which was good. Because it felt like it was just he and Essi, all alone in the world.

Shortly after father came back, someone moved into the farmhouse, a family with a two young boys. But that was okay, because father was back and there was school and dragons and mitochondria to think about, and Charles Wallace and Essi quite forgot about their little world through the window.

 

* * *

 

Dr Alex Murray gave a slight bow of his head as applause rang out from the lecture hall. On his shoulder, Beitris shifted and clacked her beak a couple times.

“If anyone has any further questions, you can come up front to speak with me,” he said. “We’ll be here for the next hour or so.”

Chairs scraped back as scholars stood, and chatter began as most of them shuffled out. A few stayed to talk to Alex, asking about the tesseract, mostly. He wasn’t really surprised. As exciting as quantum entanglement or warp bubbles or dark energy was, the tesseract would probably always be what he was known best for. People would fill lecture halls simply to get a glance of the man who had traveled light years in the blink of an eye and returned to tell the tale, no matter what he was talking about.  

A woman with her curly blonde hair bobbed holding a pine marten daemon came up to him. 

“Lyra Silvertongue,” she introduced herself, sticking out a hand.

Alex stopped himself from raising an eyebrow. He knew the name, Lyra Silvertongue, one of the youngest and most brilliant theologians of their time, and an Alethiometerist to boot. It was said she’d even traveled amongst the worlds, when she was just a child. Not that she was that much older now. Mid-twenties, Alex guessed. And already a year or so into her PhD.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” he said, shaking the proffered hand. “I hope my lecture wasn’t too dull for you?”

She smiled, “You definitely gave us some new perspectives to think about. We’ve assumed that Dust and Dark Matter are one and the same, but this new ‘Dark Energy’… is it really the energy state of dark matter?” The pine marten bobbed his head in agreement. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something else though. Myself and some colleagues in the cosmotheology department have been trying to study the echthroi. And uh, I had some questions about overshadowed planets.”

Alex shuddered, and his raven daemon tightened her claws on his shoulder. They didn’t like to think about Camazotz, the long darkness Alex had endured, struggling with IT, unable to perceive anything outside his own mind, not even the presence of Beitris, equally alone.

Ms Silvertongue noticed his discomfort and said quickly. “It’s just that we’ve been noticing something here on Earth which may be consistent with data we’ve collected from other systems in which the echthroi are present. And well. I thought I should get your opinion on the matter, seeing as you’ve… well, you’ve experienced what an overshadowed planet is like. Could there be echthroi here?”

Alex looked around. Most of the scholars had left, and there was no-one really near them. But still…

Very few people knew the truth about earth, that the echthroi were very well ensconced about this little world. You couldn’t see the dark cloud that surrounded the planet from earth, it was like trying to look at your own eyeball. The only people who had seen the terribly shrouded earth had been out of the system… and very few people had been out of the system. Most of them, in fact, had been members of Alex’s own family.  But theology was making leaps and bounds, and you didn’t need to _see_ the echthroi anymore to find them.

“Is there somewhere we could meet with you and your team?” Alex asked. “There’s a lot to tell you.”

 

* * *

 

“This is the place?” Kit asked, glancing skeptically at the farmhouse. It didn’t look to be in great condition. There weren’t any cars or anything to indicate anyone lived here.

“These are the coordinates from Urruah’s cousin,” Nita replied. “But maybe she…”

“Cousins!” A small white cat came barreling across the lawn towards them. “Oh well, _well_ met. My ehhif are out now, it should be fine for you to have a look around. Right back here, follow me.” With that the cat bounded off.

Nita and Kit looked at each other. Nita giggled. They followed the cat.

“I was out in the garden the other day,” she was saying, “and there was this leaf and it was windy, right so… well, that’s not important… but anyway there was just this _hole_ in the air and it is just _weird_ , like, well, you’ll see, but I’ve seen word gates before, I spent some time with Urruah right after my ordeal, he showed me the ropes, this is nothing I’ve ever seen before and it smells bad like _nothing_ but bad, you know? Anyway, it’s right here.”

The cat stopped before a small shrub.

Kit squinted, “Um, sorry, what are we supposed to be seeing.”

The cat glanced up at him, “Oh, I suppose you don’t have quite the right angle from up there, come down, come down.”

Nita and Kit both knelt on the ground and peered towards where the cat was gesturing. It seemed to be pointing at a shrub, but when Kit looked from this angle, it looked like a chunk had been cut out of the shrub, and instead he saw weeds and a stone wall. Nita reached out a hand and poked at the air around the hole, and inside it.

“Feels normal,” she said.

“Have you seen this before then?” the cat asked.

“Nooo,” Nita amended. “I just meant I can’t sense any wizardry around the, uh, opening?”

Kit had his manual pulled out, and it was collecting readings for him on the hole. “Definitely not something created by wizardry,” he said. “Um, should we like, go through?”

“Oh,” the cat said, “I’ve done that a few times. It’s completely okay as long as you remember how to get back out. It almost looks like the same place, but with a better garden. And a dog. Sometimes.”

Kit looked at Nita and shrugged. “After you?”

Nita managed to wiggle herself through the hole. “It’s kind of small, are you sure you can make it Kit?”

Kit poked his head through the hole, then his shoulders, then the rest of himself without much trouble.

“It’s not that tight,” He told Nita, standing up and brushing dirt off his pants. “Maybe you stretched it a bit?”

Nita gave him a _look_.

“Hey,” Kit said, “I just meant…”

“Umm, sorry, why are you in our garden?”

Kit and Nita swung around. Two nearly identical boys who looked a little younger than them stood at the edge of a quite extensive vegetable garden, staring curiously at them. Two dogs, a Belgian Shepard and a retriever, stood beside them.

“And where are your daemons?” the retriever asked.

Kit frowned. As a wizard, it wasn’t unusual to have everything and anything talk to you, but the dog was not speaking in cyene or in the Speech, but in plain New England accented English.

“Hey,” the Belgian Shepard bared his teeth, “he asked you a question.”

“Aliisa,” the boy who has spoken before said warningly.

The dog sat, but didn’t look pleased.

Nita coughed.

“Um,” she said. “We’re on Errantry?”

The boys looked vaguely baffled.

“You probably want to talk to Charles Wallace,” the second boy said.

“Charles Wallace?” Kit asked, still a little shocked by the physiological impossibility that was _dogs speaking English_.

“Out brother,” the first boy said. “We’re Sandy and Aliisa, by the way. This is Dennys and Jani.” He gestured at the other boy.

“I’m Kit,” Kit said. “This is Nita. Is your brother an advisory?”

Sandy and Dennys exchanged baffled looks, “Nooo I don’t think so.” Dennys said. “But he deals with the weird stuff that goes on, usually.”

“Him or Meg,” Sandy added.

“Sometimes Mother,” Dennys said.

“Or Father, if he’s around,” the retriever – Jani – added.

“We really are the normal ones, aren’t we?” Dennys said to Sandy.

“Nothing wrong with that!” Sandy retorted. “Someone in this family’s gotta have their feet firmly on the ground.”

“So your brother,” Nita prompted.

“Right this way!” Sandy exclaimed.

 

* * *

 

Calvin O’Keefe had been going for a swim in the placid ocean, warmed slightly by the summer sun. His work was right on the beach, so on his breaks he would swim out and just bask, listening to the ocean. It had been a sunny day when he set out, no more than five minutes ago, but now the sea roiled angrily, silvery waves rising high above Calvin’s head. Above him, Shannen was being buffeted by great winds and sheets of rain. He couldn’t see the shore anymore. He didn’t even know in which direction it lay.

“Cal, what is happening!?” she called. He could barely hear her voice.

“I – ” He coughed and chocked as a wave smacked him in the face. This made no sense. This storm had come out of nowhere, there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when they left, and the forecast was clear for the next week or so.

Something rose out of the water beside him, and he braced himself for another smack of seawater.  The thing looked at him. Calvin looked back into the eye of a humpback whale.

“Cousin!” it said.

And that’s when Calvin realized that he must be dreaming because storms didn’t appear out of nowhere and whales didn’t speak.

“Cousin!” The whale said again. “What are you doing!? You shouldn’t be here!”

It wasn’t as though the whale was actually saying _those words_ , more like it was more like that’s what the words the whale was saying meant. It was a bit like kything, but with language. But Calvin was dreaming so it didn’t matter. Although as he got thrown underwater by another stinging wave he wished his dream didn’t feel so _real._

“Oh, for the Sea’s sake,” The whale said. It sounded exasperated. Calvin almost laughed, but he was too busy trying to keep his head above the water.

There was a _crack_ , and Calvin almost passed out with pain. He was dimply aware that he was lying on solid land and Shannen was gone, she was gone so far away… Spots flickered in Calvin’s vision. He was vaguely aware of a voice in his ear. It sounded like the whale. Calvin tried to consider this, but the pain was terrible, everywhere and terrible. He let himself be bourn away on it, a tiny ship on a vast angry sea.

 

* * *

 

Will must have been hallucinating because what he was seeing was not possible. That’s why he didn’t run when the pack of _giant extinct wolves_ came thundering towards him. He simply stared and thought, _This is not another world because it can’t be another world. There are no other worlds for me anymore._   _Unless,_ another thought broke in, _that_ was _an angel. And they were right_.  Kirjava sat silent and still at his side, as though mesmerized.

And so he didn’t move as he contemplated what strange food could possibly by reacting so horribly with him as to cause this scale of hallucinations. The wolves thundered closer. He could feel their footsteps pounding into the earth, he could hear their panting, but he didn’t move – until someone yanked him off his feet, and he landed hard with his face pressed into the cold Irish ground.

“What the bloody hell was that!?” an angry Irish voice yelled at him. “Didn’t think, ‘oh, maybe I should do something about bloody _wolves_ about to _rip me to shreds!?_ ’ Hmm?”

Will pushed himself to his feet, scooping up Kirjava in his arms, and stared angrily at the young man who had knocked him down. (He also took a moment to appreciate that there were no longer any wolves because they were _extinct_ and _impossible_ ).

“What was that all about!?” He snapped.

“Oh, great, he’s English,” the Irishman said, as if to thin air, “that explains some of it.”

Will drew himself up, “I don’t know about you but where I come from we don’t _throw people to the ground_ and – ”

“Will,” Kirjava interrupted him, “he said _wolves_.”

Will blinked.

Rona stared at Kirjava.

They both opened their mouths at the same time to speak.

They closed their mouths.

“You first,” said Will.

“Are you a wizard?” the Irishman asked.

“No,” Will replied, “Though I know a couple. I suppose you are?”

“Ronan Nolan,” the man said by way of reply, sticking out a hand.

Will shifted Kirjava to one arm and shook it gingerly, “Will Parry,” he replied. “Did you say _wolves_?”

Ronan sighed, “Unfortunately, yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter one's title is taken from the T.S. Eliot's 'Burnt Norton', the first of his 'Four Quartets'.


	2. Climbing Up Into the Air

“I’d really thought we’d got this all cleared up a few years back,” Ronan sighed.

He and Will were in, of all places, an American Style Fried Chicken Diner.

“Got what all cleared up?” Will asked.

“I’m getting to that,” Ronan snapped, sipping meditatively at a coke.

Will at this point had put his age at around 20-something, younger than he had at first suspected. Wizards were tricky though.  Mary had introduced him one time to an eleven-year-old wizard who had lectured Will on proper subjunctive conjugations of the Speech.

“Okay, so there are lots of other universes,” Ronan started.

“I know,” Will replied.

Ronan raised an eyebrow, “Alright. Well, it’s possible to get to these other universes using wizardry. And normally, that’s the only way to get there.”

 _No it isn’t_ , thought Will, but didn’t say anything.

“But here,” Ronan continued, “it’s a bit more… laid back. All the wizardry that’s been done on the island builds up and builds up and it makes it really easy to do wizardry ‘accidentally’, even if you aren’t a wizard. So you’ve got all these people going sideways for no reason, going into other universes. It was quite a mess.”

“Was?” Will asked.

“A few years ago,” Rona said, “maybe three? There was a big intervention here. Do you know about the Lone Power? Basically one of his avatars was trying to destroy the world, blah blah, same old story. We stopped him, the overlays got better, less people started going sideways without warning everyone wins.”

“What’s happening now?” Kirjava asked.

Ronan looked down to the floor, where she was curled up at Will’s feet. Ronan had adjusted pretty well to the whole, ‘here’s my soul in animal form’ idea, all things considered. Will figured as a wizard he’d seen stranger.

“I have no idea,” Ronan said. “I’ll have to talk to some people.” He looked a little lost.

Kirjava batted Will’s shin with a paw. Will gave her a look which he hoped conveyed the message, _No thank you I barely know the guy._ Kirjava flicked her tail crossly. Will raised an eyebrow. Kirjava stood, stretched, and walked over to Ronan.

“How much do you know about angels?” she asked.

               

* * *

 

Kit gave a start when he saw Charles Wallace because the kid looked about 6.

“I’m ten, actually,” Charles Wallace said.

Kit blushed, and then thought _can he read minds too?_

“I’m not reading your mind,” the kid continued, “that’d be rude, for one. But everyone is shocked by my age. And I know I look younger than I am. I hope it doesn’t cause you too much trouble.”

 _It shouldn’t_ , Nita silently chastised Kit _we’ve worked with kids before. You know how smart they can be. Think of Dairine when she was his age._

 _Alright alright_ , Kit replied. _It’s just… not what I was expecting_.

 _Has five years of being a wizard not taught you to expect the unexpected?_ Nita asked.

“Charles Wallace,” Sandy was saying, “these are Kit and Nita. They came to see you.”

“Actually,” Nita said. “We didn’t. We’re kind of here by accident. There’s some kind of hole in your garden and –”

“The window,” Charles Wallace exclaimed. “Oh I had forgotten about that. Essi, remember?”

Kit looked around to see who he was speaking to, and saw a finch flit down to land on the table in front of the boy. He made a mental note to ask about all these English-speaking animals sometime.

“We haven’t thought about that in years!” The finch said.

“How’d you get through?” Charles Wallace asked. “When I last saw the window it was tiny.”

“It was easy enough to get through it,” Nita said. “Maybe it expanded?”

Charles Wallace looked pensive, and Kit nearly laughed because it was such a serious expression on the face of a kid who looked _six years old_.

“I’m not entirely sure that is a good thing. Can you show us?” Charles Wallace hopped off his stool.

Back in the garden, Charles Wallace peered at the hole in the air.

“It is definitely bigger than I remember. I wonder if this has anything to do with the echthroi.”

“The what?” Kit asked.

“Primordial shadows,” Charles Wallace said enigmatically.

Nita and Kit exchanged a look.

“Like a pullulus?” Kit asked. “Dark matter?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not dark matter. That’s different. That’s just Dust. Should we go through?”

Kit and Nita followed Charles Wallace through the hole back into their own world.

“Oh you’re back,” the cat said, jumping up from where she had been fastidiously grooming herself. “I was worried you’d gotten lost. I was wondering if I’d have to come get you. Who’s this?”

“This is Charles Wallace,” Kit said. “He lives on the other side of the hole.” He turned to Charles Wallace and switched to English. “This is Aarrha. She’s a colleague of ours.”

“What were you just speaking?” Charles Wallace asked. “It sounded like Kything but with words.”

“It’s the Speech,” Nita explained. “Everything understands it, in its own way. What’s Kything?”

“Speaking without words,” Charles Wallace said absently. Essi had transformed into a cat – Kit got a start from _that_ – and was pressing noses with Aarrha.

“So are you Teachers or something?” Charles Wallace asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kit replied. “Have you heard of wizards?”

“I’m still not sure where I sit on the topic of magic,” Charles Wallace said.

“Well, we don’t exactly do magic,” Kit said. “Wizardry is more about talking to things and asking them to do what you want them to do.”

“Oh sure,” Charles Wallace picked up Essi and scratched her ears. “I can do that.”

“But you’re not a wizard?” Nita asked. “Did you have your Ordeal? Do you have a manual?”

“I’ve been through some rough spots,” Charles Wallace replied, “but I can’t say I’ve experienced a capital-oh Ordeal. What’s a manual?”

“It’s what they call the Whisperer,” Aarrha said. “Where they get all the information about how to do wizardry and find out things that other wizards know. They get it set out for them, but some of us get it whispered in our ears.”

Kit showed him his manual.

Charles Wallace blinked, “I don’t have a book like that. Sometimes I know things, but that’s just cause the people or whatever _tell_ me. I don’t get any special information or instructions or whatever.”

“Okay, okay,” said Nita, flapping a hand briefly, “we’ll figure this out later after we deal with the issue at hand.” She gestured at the bush.

From this angle you couldn’t even see the hole in the air. The garden looked perfectly normal.

“I take it these ek-thingies are bad news?” Kit asked.

“Echthroi,” Charles Wallace said, “with a see-aich.”

“So what do we do about them? Are they gonna come into our world through the window?”

“Do you know how to close the hole?” Nita added.

“I don’t,” Charles Wallace said. “It’s not really something that is there, it just kind of is. So it’s hard to get a grip on it.

“And as for the Echthroi,” he added, “I have no doubt they are already in your world.”

 

* * *

 

Lightning flashed again, followed almost directly by a crack of thunder, and Lyra looked around resignedly for somewhere to sit. She and Pan had been hurrying to get back to their apartment through the rain, but when the wind had begun to howl with unexpected ferocity and the lightning and thunder drew closer to one another, they had ducked into a covered walkway to wait out the worst of the storm. The storm had been completely unprecedented, while rain was commonplace in an Oxford July, the hurricane-like tempest raging now was decidedly not. But Lyra was thinking of Echthroi and angels and the storm was merely a passing annoyance.

“Mind if I share your shelter?” someone asked.

Lyra turned and saw a person standing just inside the dry area offered by the walkway. They were indistinct, and seemed to be wearing layers and layers of clothing, scarves and jackets and boots forming a kind of swirling cloud of contrasting patterns and colours surrounding the person.

“Not at all,” Lyra said.

She couldn’t see the person’s daemon, but with that much spare material the stranger could probably be hiding a small dog somewhere on their person.

“I must say,” the stranger said, shaking their head and dislodging a miniature rainstorm, “I did not expect this much of a to do. Scattered showers would have done. Maybe some lightning. This is a bit much.”

Lyra blinked and nodded slowly. She wondered if the person was a witch.

“Do you happen to know where we are?” the stranger asked.

“Uh, a little bit south of Somerville College,” Lyra said. “Where are you trying to get?”

“Helsinki,” the person replied. “Oh, I really have gotten off course, haven’t I?”

“Russia?” Pan whispered to Lyra.

 _Flash Crack!_ went the lighting and thunder, in synchronization. Lyra saw in the flashbulb light a wild grin on the face of the stranger. They seemed in their element in the storm.

“Wild nights are my glory,” the stranger said, as though replying to Lyra’s thought. “I suppose I’d best be on my way. So nice chatting.”

They stepped back into the storm, and seemed to vanish between the sheets of rain.

Pan stood on Lyra’s shoulder, balancing his forepaws on her head. “That,” he said, “was one of the stranger things that has happened this week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is from The Briar and the Rose, by Tom Waits (done beautifully by [The Once](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6AqRoUNBR4&ab_channel=susannaevelyn))
> 
> Full disclosure, there was a bit in this chapter that didn't want to be written so I took it out and stuck it in chapter 3. Hence the teeny-ness of this chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> For those who are unfamiliar to any of these fandoms, I hope it won't be too confusing. Some of the basics of wizardry are explained in chapter 2. Also, we get kind of an idea of what echthroi are. Kind of. And daemons are more or less external animal-iforcations of a person's soul. If you are having trouble with not understanding reference to the canon of the series, I suggest looking at the wikipedia articles.  
> [His Dark Materials](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials)
> 
>   [A Wrinkle in Time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Quintet)
> 
>   [Young Wizards](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards)
> 
>  I'm putting here a brief character list for convenience
> 
> The Wrinkle Crew  
> -Charles Wallace Murry - (Daemon: Esteri, called Essi, unsettled) Age: 10  
> -Alexander 'Sandy' Murry - (Daemon: Alissa, Belgian Shepard) Age: 15  
> -Dennys Murry - Sandy's twim (Daemon: Juhani, sometimes called Jani, Labrador Retriever) Age: 15  
> -Margret 'Meg' Murry - (Daemon: Usko, Lynx) Age: 17  
> \- Dr Alexander 'Alex' Murry - The kids' father (Daemon: Beitris, Raven) Age: like adult age idek  
> -Dr Kate Murry - The kids' mother (Daemon: Aatos, Raccoon) Age: Also adult person age  
> -Calvin O'keefe - (Daemon: Shannen, Scrips Murrelet) Age: 19
> 
> The YW Crew  
> -Jaunita "Nita' Callahan - Wizard, Age: 17  
> -Christopher 'Kit' Rodriguez - Wizard, Nita's partner, Age: 16 (17 in August)  
> -Dairine Callahan - Wizard, Nita's sister, Age: 14 (15 in October)  
> -S'reee - Whale, Wizard, Age: not really important?? (also I can't remember how old she was in DW)  
> -Ronan Nolan - Wizard, based in Ireland, Age: 20  
> -Aarrha - Cat, Wizard (she's an OC of mine...)  
> -Harry Callahan - Non-wizard, Nita and Dairine's father  
> -Carmela Rodriguez - Non-wizard, Kit's sister, Age: 19
> 
> The HDM crew  
> -Will Parry - (Daemon: Kirjava, Cat) Age: Early 20's  
> -Lyra Silvertongue - (Daemon: Pantalaimon, called Pan, pine marten) Age: Early 20's  
> -Dr Mary Malone - Wizard, (Daemon: unnamed for now, Alpine Chough)


End file.
